Remembrance Day Artwork

Ollie came home from school today covered in paint (seriously, how do they get it on the back of their uniforms?!) and explained that they'd been painting poppy pictures in Art.

As Phoebe has been quarantined for 48 hours due to a sickness bug I thought she may have missed the equivalent project in her class so I decided to get the paints out & do our own - I always find art or craft projects are a great & gentle way to discuss these sensitive subjects, to relate it to something they are in the process of creating rather than sitting them down for a 'serious talk'. So whilst we painted, I talked about the importance of remembering & being grateful to the brave people who protect & have protected our country & our freedom.

I like to keep hold of corks as they are a great resource, so to make an impromptu poppy stamp I cut a little 'v' into either side of a couple. 

We had a green piece of paper each & I added some simple hills to mine and invited them to add some fields or hills to theirs if they wished. We then dipped the corks into red paint & added some petals to our pictures.

The only red paint I had was a thick finger paint (it was a very spontaneous project) and I think it would have worked a lot better with runny paint but the shape was good enough for the children to be happy with them so it wasn't a problem.

I then put out some black paint & showed them how to put a dot in the middle with a paintbrush. 
Ollie decided to use the handle rather than the brush to make a neater circle, it was nice to see him using his own creativity.

I think the poppies we made were quite striking even though they weren't a uniform shape and we will put them up for Sunday and remember our homegrown heroes.